Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

During my contribution on the motion for the apology to the forgotten Australians yesterday, I was talking about Robyn from Stanthorpe when we were called to a division in the House. I want to pick up where I left off and talk about what Robyn has told me. Robyn’s mother, as I said in my contribution thus far, had been divorced from her husband for more than 10 years. This was back in 1959. Robyn’s mother decided that the best thing for her daughter, because she wanted to make sure that Robyn had the best chance in life, was to entrust her to the care of the Pastorelle Sisters at their hostel for girls in Carlton, Victoria. They were to make sure that she had a job, went to work and went to night school and continued her studies. In the space of less than eight months the Pastorelle Sisters had convinced Robyn that she should become a nun. She was convinced. She was then asked to basically, using Robyn’s words, ‘lie’ to her mother. She was then sent to Rome. The Pastorelle Sisters really failed Robyn and, using Robyn’s words, her, ‘passport application and documents were falsified’ as far as she was concerned.

Robyn’s mother had no assets. She was a divorced lady, a single woman, having at that time in history to make her own way and maintain a job for her own wellbeing. When her mother found out, she was powerless to act. Robyn was sent to Rome. It was at the convent in Rome that she was sexually molested, physically abused and ill-treated. She was ‘neglected’, as Robyn says, to the point where her youthful vigour waned and she became very ill. She was detained in this situation because her passport had been taken away. She had no money, no civilian clothes and no friends on the outside, and she could not speak the language. All of her correspondence home was censored. As Robyn says, she was subjected to ‘behaviour modification’.

In the last two years of the seven years she spent there she was, really, a stateless person because she did not have a passport. She had not been able to apply for a renewal of her passport. She was not even able to register to vote for federal elections in Australia. Robyn is a constituent of mine, and when she came back to Australia she lived with this for some 30-odd years. She is now on a disability pension. But when you talk to Robyn and read her story—and there is a lot more than I have time to put on the record today—you can see that it was an appalling situation: a whole life destroyed because of the treatment that she received. Her mother was a single mother who entrusted her daughter into the pastoral care of the Pastorelle Sisters at the Carlton hostel for girls in Victoria.

I want to briefly, because I do not have a great deal of time, talk about John Walsh, who now lives in Roma. His story is that he and his brothers and sisters were taken away from their mother while their father was serving overseas during the Second World War. John has written to me. He said that there was a knock on the door of their home at 10.30 at night. Child welfare, the police and the Salvation Army had arrived. Their mother, fearing what might be happening—because she was aware that children were being taken away from their mothers—would not open the door, so they heaved it open and took the children away. They were sent to Hay Street East in Perth. I wish that I had more time, because I know that John’s story could be told over and over again. It is harrowing, as are the stories we have heard from so many speakers.

I also want to say something about another lady in my electorate, Jenny, who is dealing with children who have been taken away from their mother, a single mother, in the last month. I know that child protection agencies today go to great lengths to make sure that children are safe. These children have been taken away from their mother, who is expecting another child in fact to Jenny’s son. She has been the subject of domestic violence. I know it is not a very pretty situation, but those children have been taken away and fostered in other homes. Jenny said to me, ‘Bruce, wouldn’t it be better if we were able to put a parent into the home to keep the mother and children together to help the mother cope with the situation rather than take them away and put them in foster care?’ One of the children who were taken away has already run away from the foster home and gone back to her mother. The mother is pregnant, so you can imagine the strain on her and the baby she is carrying. Wouldn’t it have been better to have brought foster parents into the home to live with the family and to make sure that she is able to cope and look after the welfare of the children? I put that on the public record and I think it is a suggestion that we should all look at. I hope that the government will look at it as an alternative in each case to fostering out children and taking them away from their parents, where they get mothering, nurturing love and care.

I thank the chamber and I hope that as a nation we continue to work on this issue and make more restitution to those who have been so mentally and physically abused by churches and government. Care from government is what we must make sure of in the future. (Time expired)

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